The author of Ethical Oil and host of The Source worked his way through a crowd of an estimated 5,000 with his cameraman, putting his microphone to citizens opposed to oil pipelines – first asking questions, then making accusations.

“You guys are hypocrites,” said Levant. “China is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. And you don’t care.”

One of the most difficult issues facing climatologists is making climate change relevant to John Q Public.

"Why do I care when a massive chunk of ice falls into the Arctic Ocean? What do these people with strings of degrees longer than their names talking in some arcane language have to do with me? I'm just trying to cover this month's mortgage payment, make sure that the kid stays in school and have a cold one at night while watching yet another Toronto team lose."

Unfortunately, climate change is about to hit John Q. Public's pocket book in a big way. One way or another, every one of us is about to start paying for climate change and its evil twin, extreme weather events. The Toronto Dominion Bank has compiled a list of the top 10 natural catastrophes…

Click here to view the original article[This is how the Liberal government courts the cooperation of the First Nations community for its pipeline and tanker projects; by utterly ignoring one of their most important issues. *RON*]

By James Keller, CP / Huffington Post, 05/11/2014

VANCOUVER - A year and a half after a public inquiry called for urgent action to protect women along a stretch of highway in northern British Columbia known as the Highway of Tears, mayors and other leaders in the region say the province has yet to contact them about what needs to happen.

Internal briefing notes also indicate a team of bureaucrats assigned to hold consultations with communities along Highway 16, where women have been disappearing or turning up dead for decades, have put that work on hold for much of the past year.

What emerges is a picture of slow progress that appears to contradict the province's claims that it has been busy holding a "tremendous number" of meetings about the issue …

[From the Financial Times, no less: "If branches of government bow to big business, public policy will be decided by the highest bidder" *RON*]

By Edward Luce, Financial Times, 11 May 2014John Paulson made his fortune by taking a massive short position against the US housing bubble. Today the hedge fund billionaire is betting that the US political system will fail. This time he has company. Other billionaires have launched a lawsuit to force the US Treasury to pay shareholders vast sums from the government-sponsored housing enterprises that it bailed out in 2008. Betting on Washington’s largesse has become a routine investment strategy. Whether this one works, aspiring billionaires should take note: if you want to strike it lucky, try shorting American democracy. The risk is small and the rewards are spectacular.

In 2008, the US government did “whatever it takes” to save the world economy from a rerun of the 1930s. Bailing out the people…

[The same officer has "been named in three other civil rights lawsuits against the force. The allegations in the lawsuits include wrongful arrests, illegal stops, and the unnecessary use of force. In total, the lawsuits have cost the department $215,000 in settlements." *RON*]
By Christie Thompson, ThinkProgress.org, May 11, 2014
In 2013, 16-year-old Kimani Gray was killed when two plainclothes New York Police officers shot him seven times. Police claimed Gray had a gun, though witnesses disagreed with the officers’ story.

The two police involved in the shooting, Sgt. Mourad Mourad and Officer Jovaniel Cordova, have not faced any charges as a result of the shooting. One has, however, stayed on his department’s radar: Mourad was awarded “Cop of the Year” this Thursday by the NYPD Muslim Officers Society.

“He’s done a lot of work taking down criminals and taking a lot of guns and drugs off the street,” Lt. Adeel Rana told the New York Da…

BBC News, 9 May 2014
Pakistan was close to eradicating polio 10 years ago. But conspiracy theories, a Taliban ascendancy and drive-by shootings of polio workers have reversed the gains. The BBC's M Ilyas Khan reports from the frontline of the government's war against the virus and the militants' war against its vaccinators.

"Polio workers had been shot in the area before, but we never imagined it could happen to us."

Falak Naz, a member of the World Health Organisation's polio eradication effort in north-western Pakistan, is in a desperate situation.

"I never anticipated I would be stranded in Peshawar city with an injured wife," he tells me at the Lady Reading hospital, where he has been tending his wife, one of several family members injured in a gun and grenade attack on his home in a rural d…

[Pics of yesterday's rally in Vancouver - I'm not seeing much coverage in the mainstream media (surprise, surprise). A large crowd showed up to Sunset Beach to send a warning from the west coast to Ottawa over Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. I couldn't spot myself in any of these photos! :-) *RON*]
By Zack Embree, Vancouver Observer, May 10th, 2014

An estimated 5,000 people rallied at Sunset Beach to send a message to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the federal government that the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, if approved, would be met with intense opposition in British Columbia.

"We say no. This is our coast. We will not let this pipeline pass," shouted BC NDP MP Spencer Chandra Herbert, to roars of applause.

One after another, speakers took to the stage to condemn the proposed 1,170 kilometre pipeline, which would pump bitumen from Alberta's tar sands through the rockies to Kitimat in north…